Altruistic World Online Library

Possibly better than tootsie rolls, illustrated screenplays are tasty little nuggets of cinematic flavor in a convenient pdf wrapper. Download and read your favorite movie in a quarter of the time it takes to watch it. And you can grab quotes and images.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

CHAPTER THREE: Paisley: The Plumbers

There was this bird that got a very late start on the passage south for the winter season. He got tired of flying and he rested on a telephone wire for the night. Well, the inevitable happened and the poor bird froze during the night and fell off the wire to the ground. Just as the bird woke up, a horse happened by and took a dump on the bird. The bird said, "Not only do I almost freeze to death, but now this happens to me." But the bird soon discovered that the horseshit was warming him up and he stuck his head out to look around. He let out a warble and a big cat came up to the bird and ate him. The morals of the story are: Just because someone shits on you, it doesn't mean they are your enemy-and if you're up to your neck in shit, don't sing about it.

Kissinger was convinced that if the Soviets were painted as being too advanced in strategic missile construction, then the Senate would not approve a series of treaties that he was negotiating and promoting as the rewards of "detente" with the Soviets. Arms control had progressed greatly since the 1950s. But to move beyond what Kennedy accomplished with his Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 would take very bold moves. Kissinger seemed prepared to make those moves despite facts unearthed by some analysts at the CIA about the Soviets' true intentions.

By the end of 1969, Paisley was a "nervous wreck," according to Maryann. The battle between the Office of Strategic Research and Kissinger was raging. Paisley was in charge of putting together NISM- 3. This memorandum on the state of Soviet air defenses included the Soviets' anti-ballistic-missile capability. In terms of the SALT I negotiations, NISM-3 was most important. According to Paisley's colleague Philip A. Waggener, the argument boiled down to a determination on whether or not the Soviet's new SAM V missile gave them an anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) capability. [1] Paisley had learned from a Soviet defector that the SAM V had such a capability. But, inside the CIA, a debate raged on the accuracy of this information. Suddenly, Paisley found himself having serious trouble getting his bosses to agree to include his discoveries about the Soviets' deployment of an anti-ballistic-missile system around major cities. They attempted to explain to him that because policy and intelligence were now being combined in the NISMs, other considerations had to be included. Paisley, according to his wife, actually resigned. But Paisley's CIA colleagues tell a different story. They say Paisley seemed more caught up in his personal troubles than in policy battles.

By late 1969, John Paisley's work left him with little time for Maryann, Edward, and Diane. His wife demanded that he reorder his priorities. Maryann says she threatened to leave him that year if he did not do something about his life. [2] Paisley went to his CIA superiors and was given what amounts to a year off-a year at the Imperial Defence College in London. [3]

To the CIA, Paisley's year at the Defence College was part of their grooming him for his eventual ascendancy to the top position in OSR. But to Maryann and the children, the London sabbatical was a great opportunity to get to know John again. There was little real work in the London assignment. Most at the CIA considered it a reward for Paisley's hard work and dedication. The Imperial Defence College curriculum included studies in strategic philosophy and detailed studies on the regions of the world. Here, colleagues from various Western military and intelligence services could exchange ideas. After Paisley disappeared, counterintelligence chief James Angleton speculated that this relaxed, academic atmosphere was the perfect place for the Soviets to try to plant an agent or make a recruitment. He argued that the Imperial Defence College was the sort of gathering place for Western intelligence experts that the Soviets would be "fools" not to penetrate. [4]

The course work at the Imperial Defence College was divided into three terms that were separated by short trips to various NATO installations, as well as longer overseas tours. [5]

The family rented a flat in London. Edward Paisley recalls spending much of the time sightseeing. But a disappointed Maryann said she soon learned that John was more distracted, not less. "He couldn't wind down," Maryann recalls. Paisley behaved very strangely that year. Even though he had secure facilities at the U.S. Embassy in London (which was located near the Paisleys' CIA-rented flat), Paisley opened a post office box fifty miles away at Greenham Common, the town that gave its name to a U.S.-run nuclear base in the English countryside. Paisley was not cleared for the base, yet he kept a box on the base's secure grounds. There was no real "official" reason for him to have the post office box. [6]

For a CIA man like Paisley to have a "secret" box, located very far away from where he was staying, when better and more secure facilities were available at the Embassy, is the kind of activity that strikes fear in the heart of any security officer. Following Paisley's disappearance in 1978, when a newspaper reporter learned of the box, the CIA's Office of Security made a major effort to investigate it. The very fact that they investigated indicates that Paisley's CIA superiors had not been notified of the box. One frightening conclusion some security officers made was that Paisley could have been using it for illicit purposes. [7]

What was Paisley doing in London? One possibility is that he had been asked by the CIA to personally recruit someone with whom he was acquainted while on assignment in London. Experts in counterintelligence suggest that Paisley was being contacted for this mission through some sort of "drop" at the nuclear base. But others are more skeptical, including Paisley's own colleagues, who say they have no explanation for his activities.

According to his son, Edward, Paisley was in good spirits in London. Edward does not recall ever going to Greenham Common with his father. He explained that the family did not have a car in London since their flat was not far from the American Embassy. [8]

For Maryann, the memories of London were not wonderful. Their marriage continued its downward spiral. She remembers his being called constantly to the American Embassy to work. On several occasions she heard him use false names over the telephone. She also recalls his going to the embassy to use its secure communication channels. [9]

During this period, Maryann would write to the Paisley family in Oregon that things were fine. Maryann Paisley took great pride in her family and did not want to worry John's mother. [10] But by the end of their stay in London, she had serious doubts that her marriage to John Paisley could continue. He was now working between seventy and seventy-five hours a week. Like other CIA families she had come to know, her family was "compartmentalized," kept separate from his real daily life -- the Agency. [11]

John Paisley returned from London in January 1971, with a full beard. His marriage had deteriorated further, but his career was still soaring. [12]

Paisley's earlier unpleasant encounters with the Nixon White House receded as he and most of the Office of Strategic Research began to prepare for the marathon Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) negotiations. Paisley was providing briefings for Henry Kissinger. [13] Because of his high rank in the OSR, Paisley found himself being appointed to one troubleshooting team after another sent off to various points to do postmortems. These included Cyprus, India, Cambodia, and Geneva during the Nixon years. Paisley's professionalism never gave Kissinger or others he dealt with a hint of his personal disdain for the Nixon administration. Though his sister remembers him railing against Kissinger, Paisley found himself with increasing responsibilities as he played his part in putting together teams for the SALT I talks. The support work for such an arms limitation negotiation was tremendous. And it was Paisley's division that was charged with determining just how strong the Soviets were, and in what strategic areas. Those estimates would determine all U.S. negotiating positions with the Russians.

In spite of Paisley's earlier problems with Kissinger on the NISMs, it was Paisley who gave Kissinger one of his best pitches for selling SALT to political conservatives. Paisley and his CIA colleagues argued that the Soviets could no longer afford to support a huge defense buildup. Their Pentagon colleagues disagreed. The OSR's scientific division reported that the Soviet missiles, while being produced at ever-increasing rates, were heavier than ours, but were also amazingly inaccurate. They argued that because they were so inaccurate, it was necessary for the Russians to carry bigger warheads to destroy a target. Further, such information was being confirmed by FEDORA and TOP HAT, the code names of two Soviet agents who had been recruited by the FBI to work against the Soviet government. According to former CIA analyst David S. Sullivan, both agents reported that the Soviet ICBMs were inaccurate. This information, combined with Paisley's insistence that the Soviet economy could not support a massive nuclear buildup, created the foundation for America's negotiating positions. It was on these positions that Kissinger based his negotiations with the Soviets. In retrospect, they proved to be disastrous.

The image that Paisley and his colleagues painted of the Soviet Union, based on their estimates, used methodologies that were "flawed," according to Phil Waggener. Waggener, who worked with Paisley, says there were "very basic problems" in some of Paisley's original methods of measuring the Soviet military economy. The net result was that for years the CIA advised U.S. policy-makers that the Soviets were less able to support a major strategic military buildup than they actually were.

Waggener and other OSR employees see nothing sinister in the errors. But other colleagues are not so charitable. David Sullivan said that, because of Paisley's estimates, the United States went into the SALT I negotiations convinced that the Soviets did not have the economic wherewithal to engage in a major secret buildup. "But, as history shows, that is precisely what they did," Sullivan asserts.

After John Paisley disappeared, his son, Edward, recalls seeing a document indicating that the Soviets approached John Paisley overseas. He believes it was during the SALT I talks. Edward says this document was later stolen from his mother's lawyer's office. According to Edward, the document said Paisley was approached and told to go ahead and take the bait by the CIA. Edward said that was the last reference to it. [14] Later on, he claimed, the document had disappeared.

Paisley's boss, Hank Knoche, says that if such an approach by the Soviets took place, he believes he would have been told about it: "I think maybe he would have mentioned something like that to me. Maybe not. Maybe not. If he reported that and had been told to keep to himself, then others would worry about it. He would play that security game. He was a bug on security. Reclusive. It's hard to put together his life outside the Langley building, isn't it? Strange."

What disturbs Paisley's former colleagues is that after establishing himself as tough and independent of Kissinger before going to England in 1970, Paisley came back as almost a different person. "He just didn't speak out, he seldom stuck his neck out," OSR colleague Clarence Baier recalls. The net result of the CIA information given to Kissinger was that the Soviets were allowed to build up their strategic weapons force to a level that erased the longtime U.S. advantage.

As Paisley became acquainted with Kissinger and his staff, he found himself being used more and more for White House chores. The CIA had known since the Johnson administration that the White House had been involved in domestic spying. After all, one of these operations had been established in the CIA's own basement offices: Operation CHAOS. President Johnson had been convinced the Communist Chinese and the KGB had infiltrated the antiwar movement. Over the years of CHAOS's existence, more than one hundred office-size filing cabinets were filled with personal information on Americans and so-called leads to subversive overseas contacts. [15] The Nixon administration used that same argument to intensify its own domestic spyIng effort.

In January of 1971, a White House aide to Henry Kissinger and the National Security Council Staff named David R. Young was given what seemed like a routine White House assignment by Egil "Bud" Krogh, Jr., to declassify documents.[16] Officially, Young was responsible for the classification and declassification of documents. His new position also required him to work with other government agencies, including the CIA, to determine the possible sources of unauthorized disclosure or "leaking" of classified documents and secret information. Joining Young as his assistants were George Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. Liddy, a lawyer, came to work for Young from an assignment at the Department of the Treasury on the recommendation of Bud Krogh during the early summer of 1971. Liddy had been working with Krogh on the international drug problem -- an investigation to which Paisley was also assigned. Krogh was convinced Liddy's experience would give Young what he needed. One of Liddy's new responsibilities was to serve as liaison with the Department of Justice in connection with the project.

Hunt was recommended to Young by Charles Colson. Colson believed that Hunt's CIA background would be of great help on the project. Hunt's role was to deal with the CIA on an informal level while Young would be the formal contact to the top people at the CIA like Director Richard McGarrah Helms and his deputy, Gen. Vernon Walters. [17]

On the surface the declassification project Young was running seemed benign. Officially the White House said it was merely trying to speed up the normally lengthy declassification process. But below the surface, the Nixon administration officials had other motives. They were trying to get their hands on files that contained embarrassing information about previous, Democratic presidencies so they could release this material to the public. In June, when the Pentagon Papers appeared in the New York Times, Young and other White House officials expressed anger that only documents embarrassing to the Nixon administration seemed to be leaked. Colson and Young began a campaign to convince more senior White House staffers like Bob Haldeman and John Erlichman that a series of selective disclosures about Democratic administrations could strengthen Nixon's political position. [18]

According to former FBI officials such as William Branigan, the Nixon White House first approached J. Edgar Hoover for assistance in setting up the "Plumbers" to plug unofficial government leaks, but he flatly refused. At first Nixon wanted to conduct the Plumbers under the FBI's own black-bag operations. But Hoover did not buy allegations that the Pentagon Papers had been leaked to the Soviets and that, therefore, the Bureau should get involved in the investigation. Besides, Hoover had his own problems. [19]

The White House then turned to the CIA for assistance. When David Young requested that Richard Helms send someone from the CIA to help plug leaks, Helms did what he usually did in security matters, according to former Angleton staffer Clare Petty: he turned to Angleton for advice. Angleton suggested to Helms's staff that the Deputy Director of Strategic Research had experience in previous leak studies. Paisley's name was sent back to Young as someone who might be able to assist. [20]

Why Paisley?

One reason that Angleton may have wanted Paisley in Young's proximity was that Paisley may well have been working for Angleton all along. As Chief of Counterintelligence, Angleton was growing more and more disturbed with Henry Kissinger. Paisley may have been sent over by Angleton simply to report back to him on what was going on.

Angleton had reason to fear Kissinger. He knew that Young had been involved with Kissinger on discussions of how hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium were transferred illegally to Israel to seed their nuclear weapons program. It was no secret in the intelligence community that Angleton had played a major role in assisting in the transfer. Angleton had supervised the United States' intelligence relationship with Israel for its entire history. If the news of the illegal transfer was made public, Angleton stood to lose everything -- including his role in running the CIA's "Israeli account."

On August 9, 1971, Paisley was personally requested by Young to conduct a crash investigation of security leaks to the press. He was asked to look at nineteen categories of leaked security information. The subsequent report sent out by Paisley under the signature of Director Helms so impressed the White House that Paisley was designated to handle CIA liaison with the Plumbers. [21]

Young's Plumbers unit was designed to paint as unpleasant a picture of the leakers as possible and to get this damaging information out in public. Soon Paisley found himself in the middle of this distasteful and paranoid world. Documents show that Young requested Paisley by name. Paisley's job was to provide fodder for Young's efforts from the repository of CIA secrets.

Soon Paisley was in the thick of efforts to discover everything embarrassing about Daniel Ellsberg, including the most intimate details of Ellsberg's sexual activities. [22] By August 18, 1971 the project to investigate Ellsberg and discredit the leakers of the Pentagon Papers took on new urgency. The White House code named the effort ODESSA.

All of these operations went on under an umbrella organization called the Task Force on Leaks. As John Paisley discovered, the Nixon leak task force was merely a team of second-story artists designed to uncover and then collect damaging and embarrassing evidence on "hostile" leakers. But domestic political "enemies" of Nixon and his administration soon became primary targets.

In one memorandum to Erlichman from Colson and Young is a reference to the CIA's performance in the project, saying the Agency had provided "little relevant material." It goes on to say that the "CIA has been understandably reluctant to involve itself in the domestic area, but responsive to the President's wishes, has done so. Overall performance to date is satisfactory." Donald Burton, who worked under Paisley at the CIA, said Paisley's being picked by the White House "does not surprise me. First a leak comes out and everyone says what are we going to do about those fucking leaks and how are we going to stop of all these leaks. This will come down right through the DCI and not the security side of things .... It happens in every administration .... So it will come down and hit the Chief [of OSR] and the Chief will then have to assign someone and it is going to be the deputy. So John's the deputy and it is a shit detail as far as John is concerned." [23]

What other operations did Paisley get involved in? There has been much speculation over what the Plumbers were really looking for in Lawrence F. O'Brien's office the night of the famous Watergate break-in. But perhaps the most important clues can be taken from Nixon's obsession with the Kennedys. Hanging over Nixon's head at the time was a $100,000 unreported campaign contribution to Nixon from Howard Hughes, accepted by his best friend, Bebe Rebozo. [24] Rebozo was under Justice Department investigation. In the 1960 campaign, a Howard Hughes loan to Nixon's brother, Donald, became a major issue. According to Robert Maheu, a former FBI and CIA man himself who managed Hughes's affairs for years, he had also delivered a $25,000 contribution to Robert Kennedy's 1968 campaign. [25] Maheu says the idea that O'Brien had any detailed knowledge of any further contributions to the Kennedys is absurd.

It may have been details tying Hughes to the Kennedys that the Plumbers were searching for that night. Maheu explains that by this time a group of Mormons hired by Hughes had taken over his affairs. But why wouldn't Nixon, considering his close relationship with Hughes in the past, simply ask him about the loans? According to Maheu, Hughes was not "operating on all cylinders by this time," and the "Mormon Mafia" around him largely cut him off from the outside world, even from the President of the United States. Why, then, would Nixon believe that there was more to O'Brien and the Kennedy contributions than there actually was? Could Angleton, through Paisley, have planted that idea? Could the CIA actually tempt the Plumbers into an intemperate act over the promise of a memorandum showing a connection embarrassing to the Kennedys? Considering the fact that Young, Colson, Liddy, and Hunt left no stone unturned to find out damaging material about the Kennedys, having a trusted man like Paisley feed them this kind of a meal seems like a simple matter.

There are strong indications that some sort of Plumbers team was kept on even after the arrests that night at the Watergate. Top-level CIA sources suspect that it was the Plumbers who conducted an operation that ruined plans for the CIA's second mission by the Hughes-built ship, Glomar Explorer, to recover more of the wreckage of a Soviet submarine that sank in 1968. On June 5, 1974, two months before Richard Nixon resigned, the highly secure Hughes storage facility at 7020 Romaine Street in Hollywood, California, was burglarized. It was the third burglary of a Hughes facility in four months. According to Maheu, among the items taken, despite a security guard and impressive vaults, was a footlocker full of Hughes's records documenting his political contributions over the years, including the ones to the Kennedys. In that footlocker was also the memorandum detailing the Glomar Explorer arrangement. For then CIA Director William Colby, the burglary began the nightmare of trying to keep the Glomar Explorer operation secret from the Russians by keeping it out of the American media. [26] But to Maheu it was not the Glomar material that interested the burglars; it was the political material. Maheu believes it was the "Mormon Mafia" that tipped off the perpetrators in order to solidify their control of the Hughes empire. Maheu does not believe the break-in would have been possible without cooperation from inside the company. "I am familiar with 7020 Romaine. Hughes chose it for its total security. And some son of a bitch is going to show up in the wee hours and say to the guard, 'Take me to the vaults'?" Maheu asked.

Maheu also does not believe the documents in the trunk were for the exclusive use of the "Mormon Mafia." "This is funny. Here ends up top-secret information in the hands of a bunch of [Mormon] zombies that couldn't pass the lowest of security tests," Maheu said.

So who did burglarize Romaine? [27] Maheu believes that the "Mormon Mafia" that took control of the Hughes empire may have tipped off the Nixon White House about the footlocker in order to curry favor with the administration. Several FBI officials involved in the Watergate investigations believe Romaine Street may have been a last-ditch attempt to save the disintegrating Nixon administration. But perhaps the most logical suggestion comes from a former counterintelligence official of the FBI, who suggested that if Paisley had been working for the Soviets, using the break-in at Romaine to expose Glomar was the perfect way to keep the CIA from getting hold of several nuclear missiles the Agency had failed to retrieve on its first attempt.

For John Paisley's family, the first hint that Paisley might have been in the Plumbers came in 1973. Dale Paisley, then living in the San Francisco Bay area, recalls the incident vividly. "One time in late 1973 he came into the Bay area and called me up and asked me if I would drop him off at the Lawrence-Livermore Laboratory on the way back home. Well, a couple of days later, my son was telling me that a friend of his who was an Air Policeman said they had a raid down at Berkeley. [The friend said] in the background was a guy with a full white beard and he said he thought he was from the CIA or something. He described Jack to a T.... Well the next time I talked to Jack, I said, 'Hey, what's this I hear about that raid over in Berkeley that night?' And he said, 'How the hell did you hear about that?' That's all he said about it." [28] Confirming Dale's suspicions of Paisley's trip to Berkeley is a travel voucher dated December 3 through December 5, 1973, for "San Francisco and Berkeley, California." [29]

According to Paisley's sister, Katherine, "Mother was damn near psychic in a lot of ways about any of us if we were floating into some dangerous situation. And Mother was just paranoid over this Watergate thing that Jack was involved with, and I kept saying, 'Oh, Mother, no, he's not involved.'" While Paisley's mother had learned of her son's work for the CIA, she didn't believe him concerning his involvement with the Nixon administration. Katherine said Clara Paisley asked her son about his involvement with Ehrlichman, Dean, and Haldeman and he denied he had anything to do with them at the time. [30]

For Clarence "Bill" Baier, who worked with Paisley in the Office of Strategic Research, this was a period when John was absent "a great deal of time." Paisley never shared with his family his White House activities and the potential damage they could do to the CIA. He and Maryann grew farther and farther apart as he fell down the well of Watergate.

Of all of Paisley's mysterious behavior, none is more bizarre than his activities with "swinging clubs" in the Washington area. Paisley, who had a reputation as a sexual adventurer, was never known as a fool. For him to risk such indiscreet sexual activity could easily bring an end to his entire career. Yet, starting in 1972, John Arthur Paisley joined a series of sex clubs that would turn out to have the darkest of national security implications.

Given the fears today about AIDS, it is hard to imagine the Washington sex scene of the early 1970s. Even harder to fathom is why people with the highest forms of government clearances, like John Paisley, would risk blackmail by engaging in such activity. In the beginning, the parties were simply colleagues from work swapping spouses at their various suburban homes -- a dozen or so couples meeting in a member couple's house for a night of bed-hopping, drugs, and, in some cases, kinky sex. Usually the couples would chip in twenty dollars or more each to cover liquor and drugs, normally marijuana. But as the popularity of swinging grew, the parties among friends became more and more diverse as new swingers were recruited by word of mouth.

Eventually the sex clubs became more organized and were operated by a few people and run out of a wide range of bars. From "Capital Couples," which operated out of a former media hangout called The Class Reunion, to redneck watering holes in Prince Georges County, Maryland, the clubs flourished in the growing free-sex environment.

One party Paisley attended took place at the home of a couple Paisley met through his subordinate Donald Burton, who was a pioneer in the swinging scene. According to witnesses who asked not to be identified in order to protect their families, the setting was pretty typical. Paisley brought a dark-haired, attractive woman and not his wife, Maryann. The split-level, four-bedroom house in Falls Church, Virginia, seemed the picture of suburbia until one noticed couples having sex standing up against the kitchen stove, in the upstairs bedrooms, on the gold shag carpet in the living room, sitting on the upstairs stair railings, and even on the glass-and-wood coffee table.

Two participants in the sex parties recall an incident that they say demonstrated why they liked Paisley so much. Paisley had left a party. As he went outside, he saw that the house was surrounded by several police cars. Instead of taking off, Paisley calmly walked back into the house and told his host about the police and advised the guests to get rid of any marijuana in the house. It turned out to be a false alarm caused when a local youth next door was the subject of a high school prank.

Not all of Paisley's parties were in suburban homes. Paisley would, in later years, hold several sex parties on his sailboat Brillig. One female guest present said that "ten people trying to make love on a thirty-foot sailboat can get pretty intimate." Paisley loved to take nude photographs of his dates, and some of the parties were even videotaped. Paisley may also have hosted the least successful sex party conducted in the Washington area in the 1970s.

Today the Rush River Lodge is a peaceful country home near Washington, Virginia, about an hour south of the Washington, D.C., suburbs. In May 1972, Donald Burton and John Paisley formed the Rush River Lodge Corporation and bought the old lodge with the help of some other CIA friends in the hopes of turning it into a ski resort. [31] The place never worked out as a ski resort, but Burton and Paisley staged several sex parties at the lodge. According to Burton, this was done without the knowledge of their "straight investors."

In the days when Paisley and Burton decided to throw their swingers' party, the lodge was extremely rustic. One guest describes the experience: "The whole idea of going to a swingers' party is to have comfortable sex in a relaxed and unobtrusive environment. ... " The guest's wife finished the story: "Paisley and Burton decided it would be fun and very private to go down to their place. Well, there was nothing like it. A dozen people having sex with each other in every imaginable position for hours and then discovering that your weekend of passion doesn't include running water! The damn plumbing failed."

Most of the partygoers were middle-class, some were reporters, and most dropped out of the scene by 1980, when herpes came to wide public attention. Burton recalls bringing a clandestine CIA employee to one of the swinging parties. And some of Paisley's fellow guests were on the bizarre side. One high-level Nixon appointee enjoyed tying up women and beating them. A United States senator would walk around the parties nude and proclaim to every woman present that he was a senator.

Why was Paisley at the parties? Why in the world would he host some? As word got out about the parties and the fact that employees of the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the NSA, Capitol Hill, and the administration were attending, the KGB resident in Washington wanted them penetrated. It was the perfect place for blackmail and recruitment. It was also the perfect place to make contact with other intelligence agents.

Paisley crossed paths at these parties with an attractive Czechoslovakian couple who would turn out to be high-level penetration agents from the Czech intelligence service. Karl Koecher was a tall and aloof man, and his wife, Hana, was a beautiful woman and Karl's opposite in personality. Worried intelligence officials now believe that Paisley may have worked in tandem with the Koechers.

The Koechers were placed in the United States as what counterintelligence agents call "sleepers" -agents who would work for years to build a solid reputation and a cover story before actually collecting intelligence. The Koechers left Czechoslovakia for New York in December 1965. They told U.S. immigration officials they were political defectors and had been forced to leave because of Karl's secret work for Radio Free Europe. In reality, Koecher had been a Czech intelligence agent since 1961. [32]

Koecher easily passed the CIA's vaunted Office of Security polygraph examination. He joined a long list of spies who had been "fluttered" and had fooled the operators completely. He went into the DDO, the covert side of the CIA, to translate cables from agents. His assignment to such a sensitive post is remarkable. It shows how lax security at the CIA had become. Koecher was given access to material from this country's most prized double agents, men hidden in the Kremlin bureaucracy.

Hana Koecher, an attractive blonde who was Karl's partner in espionage, remained in New York, working in the wholesale diamond business and assisting her husband in funneling out the secrets. The CIA put Karl to work in Rosslyn, Virginia, in a nondescript office building. Here, Koecher had access to important message traffic concerning Soviet Bloc agents and their CIA handlers. The name of this operation was the AE Screen Unit. Its job was to sift through material that was so sensitive that few people on the covert side of the CIA Operations Directorate could see it in its raw form. Koecher was given a top-secret clearance and access to some codeword intelligence. This practice was almost unheard of for defectors of any sort, according to the former deputy chief of CIA counterintelligence, Leonard V. McCoy.

The details of the sex parties and CIA involvement can be found in a lawsuit filed by the owners of one of the houses used for the parties. The neighbors grew tired of the traffic and noise in the usually quiet, posh, suburban Washington community of Fairfax Station, Virginia. The owners were a military officer and his wife, then stationed abroad. When word reached them that their home was being used for illicit purposes, they filed suit.

The owners had turned their sprawling, seven-bedroom house over to a Virginia realtor for management while they were out of the country. The owners and the realtor agreed before they left for their overseas tour that no singles would be considered for tenants. The owners then discovered that their house had ended up in the hands of a sex club known as the Virginia In-Place. Complaints over activities at the house caused the Fairfax County police to put the house under surveillance one weekend. It was during that weekend that several Paisley friends were identified as having attended a party. One car whose license plate was written down by the police belonged to Donald Burton. Burton was summoned for a deposition. [34]

Burton confirms he attended the parties and recalls bringing Paisley to some at a later period. But another Paisley friend went through his old calendars, which indicate he met Paisley in the swinging scene in 1972. In the major investigations that followed Paisley's disappearance, no references can be found anywhere to the parties or the Koechers. One reason is that Donald Burton says he never notified the CIA's Office of Security of the potential problem of his identity coming out in the court documents. To make matters worse, despite the FBI investigation into the Koechers, which led to their arrest and eventual trade for the Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky on February 11, 1986, no one from the Bureau ever questioned Burton.

Burton is candid about why he did not reveal his attendance at the parties to the CIA's Office of Security: "They would have fired me if I told them." He said if someone had attempted to blackmail him, he was fully prepared to "run right down to Security and tell them."

That so many intelligence officials were involved in the sex clubs, had contact with the Koechers, and never were asked to reveal it in any investigation is a devastating comment on the current state of counterintelligence in the United States. Though evidence of Paisley's involvement was easily obtainable, investigators for the CIA's Office of Security, the FBI, and the Senate Intelligence Committee all failed to follow up leads on the swinging groups.

But, perhaps more significantly, Paisley also crossed paths with former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein at several parties. In the opinion of some people interviewed for this book, the fact that Paisley was serving as CIA liaison to the White House Plumbers at the time of his meeting Bernstein at sex parties raises many interesting questions. Could Bernstein's sexual activities, they ask, have made him vulnerable to pressure from a man like Paisley who may have wanted to get specific news stories slanted in a certain way? Bernstein denies even knowing Paisley. In a December 1979 telephone interview, Bernstein denied having attended any such parties. A few days later he called back to say, "I may have attended the parties, but I never met anyone named John Paisley."

Half a dozen Paisley intimates place Bernstein and Paisley at the same sex parties beginning as early as 1971. Donald Burton recalls: "Carl Bernstein, when I first met him, was going to the parties about 1971. I didn't know who he was .... One day he says to me or my wife Nancy he is on to something big. He said he is working on something and something is going to come out. You know all we knew was here was this guy with long hair and I saw him at two or four of these parties and then he disappeared." [35]

In a more recent interview, Bernstein confirmed that he attended swinging parties, but claimed he did not know Paisley and "Paisley wasn't Deep Throat." "I gotta tell you off the bat, I don't even know who the guy is," Bernstein said. [36]

But the behavior of his reporting partner on the Watergate affair, Bob Woodward, in the aftermath of Paisley's disappearance, raises questions. Woodward, by 1978, was an editor at the Washington Post. After Paisley disappeared, Woodward assigned two reporters to investigate Carl Bernstein. When asked if he was aware of the investigation into his activities, Bernstein said, "Oh that's crazy, Jesus ... I think you got something very wrong there. I don't think there was such a thing." Bernstein said the question should be put to Woodward.

Woodward confirms that he and other Post editors authorized the investigation into Bernstein's activities. Woodward explained that two reporters came to him with "allegations about Carl and Paisley and he felt obliged to follow up." [37]

One of the reporters who did the follow-up, Timothy Robinson, enjoyed a reputation for being very careful. He was so concerned about the assignment at the time that he requested a meeting with the reporter from the Wilmington News-Journal who first broke the Paisley story to discuss what he said was an assignment Woodward had given him. Robinson was so nervous about meeting the reporter that it was arranged by a mutual source for the meeting to take place in the basement of the Federal Courthouse in Washington where the Watergate trials took place. [38]

"Deep Throat" was described, in Woodward and Bernstein's famed book All the President's Men, as Woodward's source in the Executive Branch. The authors say that it was the Post's managing editor at that time, Howard Simmons, who dubbed Woodward's source "Deep Throat" because of the source's desire for secrecy and the pornographic movie in vogue at the time.

Was the fact that Bernstein was attending sex parties with the CIA's liaison with the White House Plumbers just a coincidence, or was that how the source really obtained his name? Both Bernstein and Woodward deny it.

Another bizarre connection of Paisley with the persona of "Deep Throat" is his possession of a Washington Post newspaper delivery agent's identification number in his own name. The number and ID turned out to be fraudulent. But why would a spy like Paisley need or even want such identification? If it was not to meet secretly with a reporter, one possibility might be that he simply wanted to have access to the Washington Post complex itself, on 15th Street in Washington. The newspaper's loading dock shares a common alley with the Soviet Embassy. Paisley would eventually move to an apartment two blocks from the embassy. Another possibility is that Paisley was using the newspaper's delivery system for dead drops and communication with agents to set up meetings.

Another point made in All the President's Men is that "if Deep Throat wanted a meeting -- which was rare -- there was a different procedure. Each morning, Woodward would check page 20 of his New York Times, delivered to his apartment house before 7:00 A.M. If a meeting was requested, the page number would be circled and the hands of a clock indicating the time of the rendezvous would appear in a lower corner of the page. Woodward did not know how Deep Throat got to his paper."

Woodward said flatly that Paisley was not Deep Throat. He then said: "You know, if Deep Throat were someone who was dead, we would name him." The problem is that there is no conclusive evidence that Paisley is dead.

What worries counterintelligence officials is not simply the aspect of Paisley meeting Bernstein or even giving him information. The haunting possibility that Paisley may have been working for Soviet intelligence and may have been under instruction to leak embarrassing material about the Nixon administration looms over the entire episode. It is also possible that Paisley may have been attending the parties to collect potentially damaging information on reporters like Bernstein or on other intelligence officials. Was Paisley collecting this information for David Young and the Plumbers -- or for the KGB?

4. Angleton made these comments in the aftermath of Paisley's 1978 disappearance.

5. The Imperial Defence College still accepts CIA staff today. While the course work varies from year to year, it has remained approximately the same as it was when Paisley attended.

6. Interview with Edward Paisley, October 30, 1987.

7. The existence of the box was discovered when one of the authors of the present work, Joe Trento, then a reporter for the Wilmington News Journal, learned that Paisley had given the box number at Greenham Common to the alumni office at the University of Chicago.

8. Interview with Edward Paisley, October 30, 1987.

9. None of Paisley's colleagues, and nothing in his files released under the Freedom of Information Act, explain either why he would be as pressed in London as Maryann describes, or why he would have a need for the post-office box.

10. Interview with Dale and Mary Paisley and Patrick and Katherine Lenahan, August 11, 1987.

11. Edward Paisley is convinced that his father was approached by the Soviets during this time, and that he was instructed by the CIA to play along with the approach. That might be an explanation for the events in London, but it is an explanation that Paisley's CIA superiors say is simply not true.

15. A big, rawboned man with bright red hair who stood taller than President Johnson was put in charge of CHAOS. Richard Ober was carried on the National Security Council staff as an aide. This position gave him instant access to the President and the White House staff so that he could keep them apprised of CHAOS'S progress in linking the KGB to the antiwar movement. Since very few, if any, real links between the communists and the American anti-Vietnam War movement were found in the three years the program operated during the Johnson administration, one might assume that Ober would be among the first to be shipped back to Langley, and the operation shut down when Nixon took office. But just the opposite occurred. Ober quickly gained direct access to Nixon; his position was enhanced, not downgraded. As one former military man assigned to the Nixon White House put it, "When Haldeman and Ehrlichman came in, this guy spoke their language and appeared to help them get through the barriers that were up at CIA." It was from the CHAOS files that Nixon compiled his enemy list. After only five months in office, the new administration began a program of wiretaps on White House aides and reporters whom they deemed untrustworthy. These wiretaps followed news reports that were leaked to the media detailing the Nixon administration's secret bombing of Cambodia. By 1971, rumors were flying within the CIA that some sort of massive domestic surveillance program was under way and that the intelligence services were somehow involved. In fact, CHAOS was suspected of being merely an appendage of James Jesus Angleton's counterintelligence shop. It wasn't. Richard Helms, who spent much of his later career trying to talk two presidents out of making the CIA continue to break the laws against domestic spying, allowed CHAOS to continue because he thought he had no choice. He was under orders from the President. Angleton, of course, was given copies of everything relating to CI from the CHAOS program.

16. Young had first met Henry Kissinger in the Rockefeller campaign of 1968. After Nixon was elected, Young volunteered his services and was made a lawyer on the NSC staff. Young went to work for Kissinger with high hopes in 1969. According to others who were NSC aides at the time, Young picked out Kissinger's clothes while Young's wife handled Kissinger's laundry. John Lockwood, a friend of Kissinger's, suggested that Young would make a good appointment secretary for the new national security adviser. But Young, according to Kissinger, did not get along with Alexander Haig, nor did he work out as Kissinger's appointment secretary. Kissinger sent him off to work "on files" in the White House Situation Room. Was Young really "downgraded," as Kissinger claimed, or did he remain a mysterious force on Kissinger's staff? Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh points out in the The Price of Power, his book about Kissinger, that Young continued to be invited to the most sensitive meetings in the Nixon administration after his transfer to work on declassifying files. An example Hersh uses is that Young attended a session with top Atomic Energy Commission officials on the subject of a security clearance for a company in Pennsylvania that was suspected of diverting two hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium to Israel.

17. This entire history is detailed in a FBI Washington Field Office memorandum based on an interview with David Young on July 3, 1972. This interview was part of the early FBI probe into Watergate that seems to have missed the point.

18. Specifically, the administration made a major effort to leak embarrassing information about the Kennedy administration on the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the fall of the Diem government in South Vietnam. All this was aimed at neutralizing the man Nixon was convinced was his chief political rival -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Though Kennedy's presidential ambitions had already been destroyed by his involvement in the Chappaquiddick automobile accident -- costing the life of a young volunteer for his late brother Robert -- Nixon was still obsessed with the Kennedys. Colson and Young began to ferret out all the information they could that showed bad judgment by the Kennedys and their appointees. Various government agencies, including the State Department and the CIA, were ordered to turn over such material. But the CIA frustrated the Nixon administration's efforts to get the documents they wanted. The Agency would give the White House only what it specifically asked for. Unless they knew what to ask for, the kind of damaging documentation Colson believed existed could not be obtained. Colson ordered Howard Hunt to examine documents, including the Pentagon Papers, to find material that could harm the reputation of the Kennedys. At the same time, Young and Colson began personally interviewing people involved in the policies in the hopes that they would be willing to cast a negative light on what went on. Hunt interviewed old colleagues at the CIA who were involved in Saigon with the overthrow of Diem. While Young was working with the CIA to release files embarrassing to the Kennedys, efforts were implemented to tighten up the release of any materials that reflected negatively on Nixon from his vice-presidential days during the Eisenhower administration.

19. Interview with William Branigan, the former FBI counterintelligence head.

20. This information comes from three former subordinates of James J. Angleton. Clare Edward Petty, in an interview on July 21, 1988, said that he had a recollection of "someone being sent over on the leak problem at the White House .... Helms would have absolutely turned to Angleton on this sort of security question. That's how he always dealt with these things."

21. CIA memorandum dated September 30, 1971. Also a series of memoranda from Peter Earnest of the Office of Legislative Counsel of the CIA to Robert Gambino, the Director of Security at CIA, dealing with Paisley's connections to the Plumbers.

22. White House memorandum dated August 20, 1971, for John Erlichman from Egil Krogh and David Young.

27. A number of veteran CIA and FBI men believe that it had the unmistakable touch of the FBI's onetime premier black-bag artist. This man, who has been in continuing legal trouble in recent years, refused through his lawyer to answer any questions about Romaine Street or the possibility that he was recruited for the Plumbers and worked with Paisley.

28. Interview with Dale and Mary Paisley, August 11, 1987.

29. The voucher was released in part under the Freedom of Information Act and lists a variety of Paisley's travel destinations for 1972 and 1973.

30. Interview with Katherine Lenahan, August 11, 1987.

31. The Washington, Virginia, records office contains land records and corporate resolutions laying out the deal for the lodge. The records clerk said no investigators had ever asked to see the file, previous to the author's visit.

32. The first detailed account of the Koecher story appeared in Washingtonian magazine in an article by Rudy Maxa and Phil Stanford in February 1987.

33. According to numerous CIA employees in positions to know.

34. Details of the case are based on court records (At Law No. 38430) filed in Fairfax, Virginia.

35. Interview with Donald Burton, October 14, 1987.

36. Interview with Carl Bernstein, December 12, 1987.

37. Interview with Bob Woodward, February 11, 1988.

38. Coauthor Joseph Trento was the Wilmington News-Journal reporter who had the meeting with Tim Robinson. Shortly after this conversation, Robinson left on a fellowship to Yale Law School and became the editor of the National Law Journal.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

The mother of Theodore Kaczynski says she still can't comprehend that he could be the Unabomber as authorities suspect, but she supports another son's decision to turn him into the FBI.

"I just can't convince myself that he could've done it," Wanda Kaczynski, 79, of Scotia, N.Y., told The Washington Post in her first interview since her elder son was arrested on April 3 at his Montana cabin.Theodore Kaczynski, 54, has been charged only with possession of bomb components and not with any of the Unabomber attacks, which killed three people and injured 23 in nine states. He was turned in to authorities by his brother David, 46.

"I ponder endlessly over it," Wanda Kaczynski was quoted in the Post's Sunday editions. "What could I have done to keep him out of the wilderness? What could I have done to give him a happier life? And yet there were so many happy, wonderful times with the family. I just don't, I just don't know."

One particular episode from young Theodore's life haunts her: seeing him restrained on a Chicago hospital bed at age 9 months, his eyes crossed in fright, while doctors photographed an unusual case of hives that kept him hospitalized and isolated from his mother for a week.

She recalls he would not look at her when she arrived for the one visit allowed that week. And how the infant would not look at her when she returned to take him home.

When he was 4, the family pediatrician showed mother and son the photograph in the file of the baby pinned to the bed.

"Ted glanced at it and he looked away," she recalled. "He refused to look at it anymore. And I thought, `Oh my God, he's having the same feelings that he had when he was held down that way."

Now, she worries about David and Theodore - Theodore for whatever lies ahead and David for any guilt he might feel about turning his brother in to the FBI.

He told his mother what he was doing on March 23.

"At first I said, `It can't be,"' she recalled. "`It can't be Ted. First of all, he didn't have the money for all that traveling. And secondly, he hates to travel. And thirdly, I can't conceive of him doing anything like that. He's never been violent all his life."'

David cried and paced and told his mother he was sorry, they recalled.

"She immediately got up from her chair and hugged me and said that she felt just awful for what I'd gone through," David told the Post. "And I can't tell you what a rush of gratitude I felt toward her in that moment."

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

A Few Good Men is a 1992 American legal drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore, with Kevin Bacon, Kevin Pollak, Wolfgang Bodison, James Marshall, J. T. Walsh and Kiefer Sutherland in supporting roles. It was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin from his play of the same name but includes contributions by William Goldman. The film revolves around the court-martial of two U.S. Marines charged with the murder of a fellow Marine and the tribulations of their lawyers as they prepare a case to defend their clients.

Plot

U.S. Marines Lance Corporal Harold Dawson and Private Louden Downey are facing a general court-martial, accused of killing fellow Marine Private William Santiago at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Santiago compared unfavorably to his fellow Marines, had poor relations with them, and failed to respect the chain of command in attempts at being transferred to another base. An argument evolves between base commander Colonel Nathan Jessup and his officers: while Jessup's executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Markinson, advocates that Santiago be transferred immediately, Jessup regards this as akin to surrender and orders Santiago's commanding officer, Lieutenant Jonathan James Kendrick, to train Santiago to become a better Marine.

When Dawson and Downey are later arrested for Santiago's murder, naval investigator and lawyer Lieutenant commander JoAnne Galloway suspects they carried out a "code red" order, a violent extrajudicial punishment. Galloway asks to defend them, but instead, the case is given to Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, an inexperienced and unenthusiastic U.S. Navy lawyer. Initially, friction exists between Galloway, who resents Kaffee's tendency to plea bargain, and Kaffee, who resents Galloway's interference. Kaffee and the prosecutor, his friend Captain Jack Ross (USMC), negotiate a bargain, but Dawson and Downey refuse to go along. They insist they were ordered by Kendrick to shave Santiago's head, minutes after Kendrick publicly ordered the platoon not to touch the would-be victim, and did not intend their victim to die. Kaffee is finally won over by Galloway and takes the case to court.

In the course of the trial, the defense manages to establish the existence of "code red" orders at Guantanamo and that Dawson specifically had learned not to disobey any order, having been denied a promotion after helping out a fellow Marine who was under what could be seen as a "code red". However, the defense also suffers setbacks when a cross-examination reveals Downey was not actually present when Dawson and he supposedly received the "code red" order. Markinson reveals to Kaffee that Jessup never intended to transfer Santiago off the base, but commits suicide rather than testify in court because he feels that he had failed to do the right thing by protecting a Marine under his command.

Without Markinson's testimony, Kaffee believes the case lost and returns home in a drunken stupor, having come to regret he fought the case instead of arranging a plea bargain. Galloway, however, convinces Kaffee to call Jessup as a witness despite the risk of being court-martialled for smearing a high-ranking officer. Jessup initially outsmarts Kaffee's questioning, but is unnerved when the lawyer points out a contradiction in his testimony: Jessup had stated he wanted to transfer Santiago off the base for his own safety and that Marines never disobeyed orders. But, if he ordered his men to leave Santiago alone and if Marines always obey orders, then Santiago would not have been in danger. Unnerved by being caught in one of his own lies and disgusted by Kaffee's questioning of the imperative to impose discipline within his unit, an enraged Jessup extols his and the military's importance to national security, and when asked point-blank if he ordered the "code red" he bellows with contempt that he did. As he justifies his actions, an exasperated Jessup is arrested; Kendrick is later arrested for his actions, too.

Soon afterwards, Dawson and Downey are cleared of the murder charge, but found guilty of "conduct unbecoming a United States Marine" and dishonorably discharged. Dawson accepts the verdict, but Downey does not understand what they had done wrong. Dawson explains they had failed to stand up for those too weak to fight for themselves, like Santiago. As the two prepare to leave, Kaffee tells Dawson he does not need a patch on his arm to have honor. Dawson, who had previously shown contempt for Kaffee for not understanding the Marine ethos, recognizes him as an officer and renders a salute.

Note: Joshua Malina is the only actor to reprise his role from the original Broadway production.

Production

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin got the inspiration to write the source play, a courtroom drama called A Few Good Men, from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah, who had graduated from Boston University Law School and signed up for a three-year stint with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. She was going to Guantanamo Bay to defend a group of Marines who came close to killing a fellow Marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer. Sorkin took that information and wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre on Broadway.[3] His roommates and he had purchased a Macintosh 512K, so when he returned home, he would empty his pockets of the cocktail napkins and type them into the computer, forming a basis from which he wrote many drafts for A Few Good Men.[4]

In 1988, Sorkin sold the film rights for his play to producer David Brown before it premiered, in a deal reportedly "well into six figures".[5] Brown had read an article in The New York Times about Sorkin's one-act play Hidden in This Picture, and he found out Sorkin also had a play called A Few Good Men that was having off-Broadway readings.[6]

William Goldman did an uncredited rewrite of the script that Sorkin liked so much, he incorporated the changes made into the stage version.[7]

Brown was producing a few projects at TriStar Pictures, and he tried to interest them in making A Few Good Men into a film, but his proposal was declined due to the lack of star-actor involvement. Brown later got a call from Alan Horn at Castle Rock Entertainment, who was anxious to make the film. Rob Reiner, a producing partner at Castle Rock, opted to direct it.[6]

The film had a production budget of $33,000,000.[8]

Nicholson would later comment of the $5 million he received for his role, "It was one of the few times when it was money well spent."[9]

The film starts with a performance of "Semper Fidelis" by a U.S. Marine Corps marching band, and a Silent Drill performed by the Texas A&M University Corps of Cadets Fish Drill Team (portraying the United States Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon).[10][11]

Several former Navy JAG lawyers have been identified as the basis for Tom Cruise's character Lt. Kaffee. These include Don Marcari (now an attorney in Virginia), former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, Chris Johnson (now practicing in California), and Walter Bansley III (now practicing in Connecticut.) However, in a September 15, 2011, article in The New York Times, Sorkin was quoted as saying, “The character of Dan Kaffee in A Few Good Men is entirely fictional and was not inspired by any particular individual.”[12][13][14][15][16]

Wolfgang Bodison was a film location scout when he was asked to take part in a screen test for the part of Dawson.[17]

Reception

Box office

The film premiered at the Odeon Cinema, Manchester, England[18] and opened on December 11, 1992, in 1,925 theaters. It grossed $15,517,468 in its opening weekend and was the number-one film at the box office for the next three weeks. Overall, it grossed $141,340,178 in the U.S. and $101,900,000 internationally for a total of $243,240,178.[19]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 81% based on 58 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "An old-fashioned courtroom drama with a contemporary edge, A Few Good Men succeeds on the strength of its stars, with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and especially Jack Nicholson delivering powerful performances that more than compensate for the predictable plot."[20] On Metacritic the film has a score of 62 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[21] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A+" on an A+ to F scale, one of fewer than 60 films in the history of the service to earn the score.[22]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine said, "That the performances are uniformly outstanding is a tribute to Rob Reiner (Misery), who directs with masterly assurance, fusing suspense and character to create a movie that literally vibrates with energy."[23] Richard Schickel in Time magazine called it "an extraordinarily well-made movie, which wastes no words or images in telling a conventional but compelling story."[24] Todd McCarthy in Variety magazine predicted, "The same histrionic fireworks that gripped theater audiences will prove even more compelling to filmgoers due to the star power and dramatic screw-tightening."[25] Roger Ebert was less enthusiastic in the Chicago Sun-Times, giving it two-and-a-half out of four stars and finding its major flaw was revealing the courtroom strategy to the audience before the climactic scene between Cruise and Nicholson. Ebert wrote, "In many ways this is a good film, with the potential to be even better than that. The flaws are mostly at the screenplay level; the film doesn't make us work, doesn't allow us to figure out things for ourselves, is afraid we'll miss things if they're not spelled out."[26]

Widescreenings noted that for Tom Cruise's character Daniel Kaffee, "Sorkin interestingly takes the opposite approach of Top Gun, where Cruise also starred as the protagonist. In Top Gun, Cruise plays Mitchell who is a "hotshot military underachiever who makes mistakes because he is trying to outperform his late father. Where Maverick Mitchell needs to rein in the discipline, Daniel Kaffee needs to let it go, finally see what he can do". Sorkin and Reiner are praised in gradually unveiling Kaffee's potential in the film.[27]

Awards and honors

Academy Awards nominationsThe film was nominated for four Academy Awards:[28]

David Cox: An outspoken Marine is found murderedby unsolved.comAccessed: 2/12/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

David Cox

David Cox

CASE DETAILS

Audiences lined up to see Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise in the hit movie, “A Few Good Men”. But not many were aware that it was based on a true story, one that may have led to the murder of a courageous former Marine.

Skeleton was discovered 5 miles away

David Cox joined the Marine Corps straight out of high school and was stationed at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. One day, while on duty, David became aware of a problem. Another platoon member, PFC William Alvarado, had written to his senator complaining about Marine misconduct.

David’s former squad leader, Christopher Valdez, explains how Alvarado was targeted for a “Code Red,” or hazing:

“We didn’t actually decide to have a Code Red for Alvarado on our own. Our platoon commander had given us an implied order that if we were good Marines, something should happen. Saturday night we went into Alvarado’s room. We blindfolded him and gagged him and then dragged him off of his bed. Dave (Cox) started shaving his head, and within five minutes, he had stopped struggling.

”

Theory: murder

David Cox convinced his platoon to stop the hazing. When they removed the gag and untied Alvarado, he was unconscious.

Alvarado was rushed to the hospital. He recovered, but his 10 attackers, including David Cox, were brought up on charges. Cox was going to be charged with attempted murder. But he said he was just following orders.

Don Marcari was appointed to defend David Cox:

“I told David, that this was a defense – obedience to orders – that had not been successful at Nuremberg, had not been successful for Lt. Calley at My Lai. And plus, we had a colonel denying he ever gave an order.”

David claimed the Code Red started with implied orders from his superior officers. For Don Marcari, that meant an even more uphill battle loomed:

“We had the additional burden of now saying he was following an implied order. And it was a very difficult case to win, and I told David that. He decided he wanted to fight it because he believed in his heart that he didn’t do anything wrong.

At his trial, David was convicted of simple assault. He was sentenced to time already served in the brig. He then completed his duty and received an honorable discharge. He returned to civilian life in his hometown near Boston.

Years later, “A Few Good Men” was released. David felt that the filmmakers had stolen his story. David Cox’s girlfriend, Elaine Tinsley, recalls at the time:

“He was stunned. Here was this movie company that was making tons of money off of his story, and if it weren’t for him, the story never would have existed in the first place.”

David and some of the other Marines involved in the Code Red, sued the movie production company. While they waited for a ruling, David spoke out about his case on radio talk shows.

By January 1994, David was living with Elaine and hoping his temporary job with UPS would become permanent. The night before he was supposed to get the good news, David’s back was giving him trouble, so he spent the night on the couch. The next morning, Elaine left at about 8:30, and then called home at about noon. David didn’t answer, but there was a message for him on the machine: UPS wanted to hire him. Elaine was happy David would be getting his wish:

“I was like, cool, Dave’s gonna get this job and he’s gonna be so excited. Then I called back again at 1:00 to check the messages, and that message was still there, and the UPS guy had called again, too.”

At 5:30 pm, Elaine returned home:

“When I came into the house that night after work, I realized right away that the doors to all the rooms were open, and our rabbit, who we usually just kept in the kitchen, was hopping all over the place.”

David’s truck was still in the driveway, with the keys in the ignition. His un-cashed paycheck was on the dashboard and his 9-millimeter gun was in the glove box. But David was gone. Elaine didn’t know what to make of the situation:

“As the days went on and there was no news from him – we checked his bank account. There was no activity on his bank account. You start to believe that, you know, maybe something did happen, but why?”

The answer came with the spring thaw. The body of David Cox was discovered on the banks of a river in Medfield, Massachusetts, about five miles from his apartment.

Sgt. Kevin Shea of Massachusetts State Police, describes the manner of death:

“He was shot, according to the ME, four times – once at the base of the rear of the neck and three times in the left side torso area.”

It was clear that robbery was not the motive. David’s cash and his credit cards were still in his wallet. And police ruled out a random attack.

Sgt. Shea believes David left home with someone he knew:

“It’s our belief that he got in the car willingly, that he knew who was coming to pick him up, and that he went to this area and walked into the woods with this person. I think that if it was somebody that was just holding a gun on him or something like that, that they would do it within the first 30 or 40 yards into the woods. David was found almost three-quarters-to-a-mile walk into the woods.”

David’s attorney, Donald Marcari, thinks the murder was somehow related to the military:

“I don’t know why David was killed. I personally believe it had something to do with the military. He was taken out of his house without signs of struggle, he was wearing his Marine Corps jacket, which he never wore. He was found between two hunting ranges where gunshots would not be unusual, and he was murdered execution style.”

But what was the motive?

After the release of “A Few Good Men,” David gave an interview on the radio. He was quite vocal about his story and the U.S. activities in Cuba. David’s mother worried that he had been too outspoken:

“After I heard that interview on the radio, I spoke to him, and I said, ‘I don’t like what you’re doing. I think what you’re doing is dangerous.’ I think he felt far too free to just speak his mind.”

David’s brother, Steve, had a different theory suggesting another possible scenario. He thought that perhaps the murder was connected to David’s job at UPS:

“A couple of months before Dave disappeared, he’d mentioned to me that he had come upon a supervisor and one of the drivers involved in some type of activity, what he believed to be was theft.”

According to Sgt. Kevin Shea, nothing has been ruled out and the investigation is still open:

“It’ll remain open until we solve it. Again, we’ll follow any leads that come through vigorously, and do that until it is solved.”

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

NEEDHAM, MASS. — A photo accompanying an article in Sunday's Sun about the murder of an ex-Marine whose experiences were the basis for the movie "A Few Good Men" misidentified the man's attorney. His name is Don Marcari.

The Sun regrets the errors.

FOR THE RECORD - CORRECTION

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- They are apparently unrelated flashes of violence, framing the final eight years of David Cox's life, from the front lines of the Cold War in Cuba to a muddy river bank in suburban Boston.

The most traumatic incident of his military tour in Cuba would inspire a movie that left him indignant, his and his comrades' service careers altered to quench Hollywood's desire for drama.

But just when Mr. Cox's life appeared to be coming together, when he was on the verge of securing his first steady and lucrative civilian job, when he had finally decided to join a lawsuit against the makers of "A Few Good Men," he mysteriously disappeared Jan. 5.

For nearly three months, police searched for him as his family prayed for him, even consulting with psychics in futile attempts to contact him.

And then, April 2, a canoeist on the Charles River spotted a single white sneaker that led to a discovery in a wooded area.

Under branches ripped from nearby trees lay the body of Mr. Cox.

There were three bullet wounds in the torso and one wound behind the neck.

"It doesn't make any sense," said Elaine Tinsley, Mr. Cox's girlfriend. "I want to find out what happened."

So do the police. They have few clues, no suspects and no motive in the apparent execution-style murder.

But overshadowing all is the story of Mr. Cox, a 27-year-old ex-Marine who saw part of his life spread across a movie screen and who wanted to retrieve his good name.

David Cox and Jay Steeves were best friends, growing up together in Needham, a town of neat homes, manicured lawns and lush parks.

When they graduated from high school in 1985, they made a pact, enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps under the "buddy system" that guaranteed they could go through basic training together on Parris Island, S.C.

The night before they left home, they even called a local radio station and requested their favorite song, Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The USA."

"The two of us always said, the things we learned in the Marine Corps, you could never learn in any college," Mr. Steeves said. "He loved the Marines. He loved the discipline."

Gung-ho Marine

David Cox, brush-cut strawberry blond hair, blue eyes and thick muscles spread across his 5-foot-11, 170-pound frame, was gung-ho Marine all the way.

He was the perfect candidate for one of the Marine Corps' tougher assignments, manning the perimeter at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

It's a lonely, pressure-filled job at the base they nickname Gitmo. Hour after hour the Marines on the guard line stand watch, sometimes less than 600 yards from Cuban soldiers. It is a frozen standoff in searing heat, a last vestige of the Cold War.

For about six months, Mr. Cox was part of Rifle Security Company, Windward Side, 2nd Platoon, a group of 30 men who lived by a fierce code of honor.

"We were the most gung-ho of the gung-ho Marines," said Christopher Lee Valdez, the platoon leader and Mr. Cox's best friend on the base.

July 1986 was a tough time for Mr. Cox's comrades at Gitmo. According to interviews and published reports, they had a man they perceived as a malingerer among them, Pfc. William Alvarado.

They believed that he had informed about a Marine firing shots into Cuba.

'Code Red'

One night, while watching a videotape of the movie "Animal House," the other Marines decided to take action, calling a "Code Red," jargon for a hazing, to teach Private Alvarado a lesson.

Ten Marines blindfolded him, stuffed a rag in his mouth, pummeled him and gave him a haircut.

It was Mr. Cox who handled the shears and who apparently first noticed that Private Alvarado's face was turning blue.

The incident had gone awry. Private Alvarado's lungs filled with fluid, he spit up blood and passed out.

"We didn't beat him to death," Mr. Valdez said.

Private Alvarado was taken off the island for emergency care in Miami. Eventually, he recovered from the assault.

But the Marines at Gitmo would also suffer wounds.

The commanding officer, Col. Sam Adams, was shipped out.

Seven of the attackers accepted "other than honorable" discharges. And of those, only Mr. Valdez would get his discharge upgraded to honorable.

Three men stood their ground, refusing the Corps' offer of a military plea bargain. They would take their chances in a full-blown court martial.

Would fight Corps

Mr. Cox was prepared to fight the Corps he believed in.

The first time Don Marcari met Mr. Cox was in the brig at Gitmo.

Mr. Marcari was a Navy attorney preparing to take his first case to trial. And Mr. Cox was his client.

"I had on my little white uniform and stuck out at Guantanamo Bay," Mr. Marcari said. "I'm going through this brig, and here I see this kid standing at attention. I gave him a little wink and he gave me a smile, and I guess he knew then that I wasn't that bad a guy."

By turning down the deal for an "other than honorable discharge," Mr. Cox faced a general court-martial and a potential 20-year sentence at Leavenworth. So Mr. Marcari wanted to be sure his client understood the stakes.

Mr. Marcari recalled, "David told me, 'I have nothing else. All I want to be is a Marine.' I said, 'David, you could take this deal and go home.' And he again said, 'No, I want to be a Marine.' "

So attorney and client fought the Marines. And they got the best victory they could in a four-day court-martial at Guantanamo.

Mr. Cox was found not guilty of aggravated battery but guilty of simple assault, a misdemeanor that carried a 30-day jail sentence. But because he had already served 38 days in the brig, the sentence was waived.

And Mr. Cox was free to resume his Marine career, serving out the final two years in places as diverse as South Korea, Panama and North Carolina.

When he was discharged in 1989, Mr. Cox held the rank of corporal.

He had served his country. And now, the blemish of his career seemingly behind him, he prepared to return home to settle down, to find work, to start a career.

'Back to square one'

"The kids who had gone to college were going on to $60,000-a-year jobs," Mr. Steeves said. "And we were back to square one. You don't have a skill for the civilian world. David was a scout sniper. But that leaves you nothing."

Steven Cox remembers his younger brother David this way:

"He was warm-hearted. Compassionate. Outgoing. The kind of guy who would yell at a baseball game. But also the kind of guy who broke down and cried for two hours the day [Boston Celtics' star] Reggie Lewis died.

"And my brother also worked hard," Steven Cox said.

David Cox always had one kind of job or another.

He hauled trash, pumped gas, worked with Mr. Steeves in a home improvement business, worked a year for a rug shampoo company, attended bartender school, even received a two-year paralegal degree.

But Steven Cox also said this about his brother: "In his heart, he remained a Marine."

His friends and family say that David Cox was not embittered by his Marine experience. Talk of the court-martial died down long before he returned home. It was forgotten, even.

And then, "A Few Good Men," a play written by Aaron Sorkin that opened on Broadway in 1989 and ran for 14 months, was turned into a movie that was released in the winter of 1992-1993.

"That's when all hell broke loose," Steven Cox said.

Life on screen

They clasped hands in the darkness of the movie theater. They whispered. And they watched.

As the story of two Marines facing a court-martial unfolded in the film "A Few Good Men," Elaine Tinsley remembers David Cox fidgeting in his seat.

In the movie, there was an accidental murder, a tight little cast of characters led by Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore and dishonorable discharges for the two fictional Marines, Harold Dawson and Loudon Downey.

But in real life, the life Mr. Cox led, nobody died, and no one was dishonorably discharged.

"For me, it was just a movie," Ms. Tinsley said. "But for him, it was his life. He went through that."

Mr. Cox was apparently outraged. He gave a February 1993 interview with a local newspaper, the Natick Bulletin, in which he said, "If I hadn't known the truth, it probably would've been the best movie I've ever seen in my life."

Mr. Cox said he was struck by the similarities between the events of his life and the movie.

The fictional setting was Guantanamo Bay.

The victim's name in the movie is William Santiago, who, like the real-life William Alvarado, wrote a letter to officials to complain of illegal firing into Cuban territory.

Following orders

And, as in Mr. Cox's court martial, the key element of the defense was that the Marines were following implied orders from their superiors.

"Mostly, he didn't like the outcome -- that the two Marines were relieved of duty and dishonorably discharged," Steven Cox said. "The whole thing ended up rotten in the end."

A spokesman for Castle Rock Entertainment, a Beverly Hills-based company co-owned by the film's director, Rob Reiner, declined to comment.

"David wanted to see fairness," Steven Cox added. "He felt they [the filmmakers] were going to make millions with this movie, a movie that was based on some of his experiences. David and some of the other guys said, 'Jeez, this is an invasion of privacy. And then, they portray us as killers.' "

David Cox was mad, all right.

Mad enough to sue.

Mad enough to contact his former attorney, Mr. Marcari, now in private practice in Virginia Beach, Va., the pair writing the first chapter of a planned book that would set the record straight.

But Mr. Cox never got a chance to complete his plans.

Something was wrong

Elaine Tinsley arrived in the apartment she shared with David Cox in Natick at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 5.

She knew something was terribly wrong because the pet rabbit named Lenny that he gave her on her 21st birthday was hopping wildly in the kitchen.

A few glasses were tipped over, and David Cox's 1988 Ford truck was still parked in the driveway.

There was no sign of David.

Frantically, she began to call family and friends to see where he was. No one knew. The next day, she filed a missing person report with the Natick police.

"It wasn't like David just to leave without telling anyone," she said.

Days turned to weeks, turned to months, and still no sign of David.

Nothing added up.

For the first time in his life, he was poised to embark on a profession. During the Christmas season he worked part-time as a driver for United Parcel Service. On the day of his disappearance, Mr. Cox's supervisor called to tell him he had been hired full-time.

After much deliberation, Mr. Cox told his girlfriend that he was ready to join a suit against those who made "A Few Good Men." But he had yet to do so when he disappeared.

Movie maker sued

Five of his fellow Marines, including Mr. Valdez, had filed suit in federal District Court in Houston against Castle Rock Entertainment and others, for, among other things, invasion of privacy, civil conspiracy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The plaintiffs say the filmmakers "stole [their] real life story, changed a few names and passed it off as their own creation."

But for now, the Cox family has put aside all thoughts of pending litigation.

During the first thaw of a New England spring, Mr. Cox's decomposed corpse was discovered along the riverbank near Medfield, 17 miles southwest of Boston.

Investigators are piecing together what few clues they have.

* Three 9 mm shell casings.

* The camouflage jacket, dungarees and sneakers Mr. Cox wore.

* And the site itself, remote, a half-mile from the nearest road, yet strategically located between two gun clubs.

Four shots fired, even in the middle of the day, would elicit little surprise.

"We're really starting from ground zero," said Peter Casey, the assistant district attorney for Norfolk County, where Medfield is located.

Mr. Casey said "there is no indication," that the murder was tied to drugs, to Mr. Cox's well-known passion for gambling at race tracks and with local bookmakers, or to the litigation over "A Few Good Men."

"He was well thought of," Mr. Casey said. "He seems to have been a pretty good guy."

The search for an ex-Marine's murderer continues.

And a family grieves.

During the months that he was missing, David's family and his girlfriend consulted with psychics.

"They said that he was surrounded by water and that he was in a warm and safe place," Steven Cox said. "But my brother wasn't warm. And my brother wasn't safe."

A Few Good Men: The True Story with Don Marcariby coldtraces.comOctober 22, 2017

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

In today’s episode, we hear from Don Marcari (view his law firm’s website here – NC, SC, and VA) who was David Cox’s lawyer in Gitmo after he was involved in the hazing of a fellow marine. David and the other marines involved in the incident were charged with attempted murder and faced decades in jail. But there was an offer on the table – David could take an other than honorable discharge and go home. It sounds like an easy decision, but David said he was simply following orders and he decided to fight the charges in court.

DON MARCARI (PHOTO CREDIT: DON MARCARI)

DAVID COX

This story became the inspiration for the hit movie ‘A Few Good Men.’ After the movie was released, David was outspoken about the differences between the movie and what really happened in Gitmo and he was planning to file a lawsuit against the filmmakers. But before he could do so, David was murdered. He was shot from behind once in the base of the neck and three more times in the left side of his torso.

BASE IN GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA 1986 (PHOTO CREDIT: DON MARCARI)

ATTORNEYS FOR THE CASE. DEBBIE SORKIN, SECOND FROM LEFT, THE SISTER OF AARON SORKIN, WHO WROTE “A FEW GOOD MEN,” AND DONALD MARCARI, FAR RIGHT. (PHOTO CREDIT: DON MARCARI)

WATCH TOWER IN GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA 1986 (PHOTO CREDIT: DON MARCARI)

PART OF WILLIAM ALVARADO’S LETTER COMPLAINING ABOUT THE SITUATION ON THE BASE (FROM UNSOLVED MYSTERIES SEGMENT)

David’s article, ‘Art Imitates Life: Natick resident sues over plot of the movie “A Few Good Men”‘ from the Natick Bulletin, February 1993:

NATICK BULLETIN PAGE 1

NATICK BULLETIN PAGE 2

Despite the above article, David was not a part of the lawsuit because he was murdered before it could come together. The lawsuit was filed by five of the other marines involved in the incident after he went missing:

February 1994 (David disappeared January 5th 1994)

VALERIE KUKLENSKI United Press International

A FEW GOOD LAWYERS: A few not-so-good Marines have taken legal action in Texas against Castle Rock Entertainment, writer Aaron Sorkin, director Rob Reiner and others over the Tom Cruise-Jack Nicholson hit movie ”A Few Good Men,” which the Marines contend was based on their own court-martial for the hazing of a young recruit. The ex-Marines — Kevin Palermo, Ronald Peterson Jr., Brett Bentley, Dennis Snyder and Christopher Lee Valdez — claim Lt. Debra Sorkin, the attorney who defended one of them, later told her brother Aaron about the case. Attorney Gary Patterson noted that unlike the character in the movie, the hazing victim in the real 1986 Guantanamo Bay incident survived. ”The profits made from this movie and subsequent video rentals (are) mind-boggling,” the lawsuit said. ”However, plaintiffs did not give permission to defendants to make public what is a very private event.” Now that their little secret has been blown, the ex-Marines want $10 million in damages.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

When David Cox saw the movie “A Few Good Men” recently, he was so nervous that he had his first cigarette in three years.

It’s not often you watch a major event from your life being acted out on the big screen by famous actors.

That’s how Cox feels about “A Few Good Men.”

The Natick resident and two fellow ex-Marines have filed a lawsuit against Castle Rock Entertainment, the maker of the popular film, claiming the film is based on a real-life event in which Cox and the other two men were involved.

“I was a wreck watching the movie,” Cox said in a recent interview. “I quit smoking about three years ago, but I had my first cigarette during that movie.”

The movie, which carries a disclaimer that the events depicted in it are fictional, is about the trial of two Marines accused of killing a fellow Marine. The Marines, named Harold Dawson and Loudon Downey, are charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and conduct unbecoming an officer.

The movie centers around an incident in which the two Marines, while stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, admittedly bound and gagged another Marine who had written to the Naval Intelligence Service to complain about members of his platoon illegally firing into Cuba.

The lawyer assigned to defend the two Marines uses the defense that the Marines were merely following orders from their commanding officers to “train” the other Marine for disobeying the chain of command and going against the Marines’ code of working out problems within the unit.

In the movie, the Marines are found by a Navy jury to be innocent of murder and conspiracy to commit murder but guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer.

For Cox, Christopher Valdez of Sarasota, Fla., and Dennis Snyder of California, that scenario is a little too real to be fictional.

David Cox, a Natick resident, feels the movie ‘A Few Good Men’ hits a little too close to home.

Cox, who has lived in Natick for three years, said after he joined the Marines in September 1985, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay as his first duty station.

There, he said, at the age of 19, he was chosen by commanding officers to join a select group of Marines called “The 10.”

“They only let the best Marines in, the most loyal ones, the ones in the best physical condition, the ones who could keep their mouths shut,” said Cox, now 26.

“We worked directly under the base colonel and company captain. We were out there on the fence lines every day, shooting at Cubans, trying to instigate a war. The physical training (for The 10) was totally against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We’d go out when it was 110 degrees and do five-mile runs along the fence lines with our helmets and flak jackets on.”

Cox said that as part of the initiation into The 10, the Marines had to, among other things, shoot at their “mirror,” the Cuban soldier stationed directly across the lines from them, which was illegal. They also had to hang from their hands from a 60-foot tower for 60 seconds.

“It’s not as hard as it sounds,” he said. “You just can’t slip.”

Cox claims a Marine named William Alvarado was caught writing letters to his congressman, telling him of some of the illegal activities of some of his platoon mates.

While one ranking officer decided it would be best to transfer Alvarado to another site so the other Marines wouldn’t seek revenge against him, Cox claims – and another officer, Capt. David Robb, testified in court – that the colonel, Samuel Adams, ordered that Alvarado remain in camp.

Cox claims the order came down through the chain of command that Alvarado should be taught a lesson. “Our platoon commander pulled us aside and said, ‘Don’t take him up to the roof and throw him off and kill him, but if he were to fall down the stairs in the middle of the night, oh well,’” Cox said.

Cox (right) and his lawyer, Donald Marcari, 1986.

At about 1:30 a.m., one Sunday in September 1986, according to Cox, he and the nine other members of The 10 went into Alvarado’s room, tied him up, forced a rolled-up pillowcase into his mouth, and started to cut Alvarado’s hair off.

Cox said that during the attack, in which his job was to cut Alvarado’s hair, he noticed that Alvarado had stopped breathing and his face was turning purple. Alvarado was taken to the medical facility at the base, and the next morning The 10 Marines admitted their involvement and were placed under arrest and put into the brig.

A key difference from the movie’s plot is that Alvarado lived, whereas the character of Santiago died.

Cox’s story is supported by Donald Marcari, the Navy lawyer who successfully defended Cox.

“I think the movie is clearly based upon the trial,” Marcari said this week from his office in Virginia Beach, Va. “There’s a lot of dramatization – it’s probably 50 percent fact and 50 percent fiction. But it’s based on the trial. I don’t think there’s any doubt that it was based on the trial.”

The 10 Marines were each appointed a lawyer and were told they could either accept an other-than-honorable discharge or go to trial on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Seven of the Marines chose to take the other-than-honorable discharge. Cox and two others decided to fight it, faced with a possible 40-year jail sentence if convicted. Marcari was assigned to defend Cox.

At a preliminary hearing, the charges against the three were reduced to aggravated battery.

In the trial, Cox, who didn’t want to turn in his commanding officers, said he was nonetheless forced to testify that he and the other Marines were given an implicit order to teach Alvarado a lesson.

“We were so brainwashed and so pro-unit – we didn’t want their asses to burn,” he said. “They were our mentors. But as time went on and it was the third or fourth week in the brig, we started realizing what they’d done. We decided it was time to start singing like canaries.

“We were willing to give them a chance to step forward. We waited as long as we could.”

According to Marcari, during the trial, Col. Adams, who is now retired, denied ever giving an order for the Marines to discipline Alvarado, but Capt. Robb said the order was implied.

“One of them was lying,” he said.

In the end, Marcari successfully defended the case on the grounds that the Marines were merely following the orders of superior officers.

They were found not guilty of aggravated battery but guilty of simple assault, a misdemeanor. That crime carried a 30-day jail sentence, but since Cox and the other two had already served 38 days in the brig awaiting trial, they were set free and allowed to keep their ranks.

“One of the jurors told me the only reason they found (Cox) guilty of anything was that someone got hurt. But he felt like he just followed implied orders,” said Marcari, now a partner in the law firm of Kershner, Hawkins and Marcari in Virginia Beach, Va.

Cox went on to serve 2-1/2 more years in the Marines, and he said he was involved in the first action of Operation Just Cause, the U.S. military operation in Panama that resulted in the arrest of President Manuel Noriega.

He left the Marines in September 1989 and returned to Massachusetts. Cox, who grew up in Needham, settled in Natick.

“A Few Good Men” is a box-office success and is considered to be a candidate for the Academy Award for best picture. Its director, Rob Reiner, is also considered a candidate for the award for best director.

The movie stars Tom Cruise as Navy lawyer Daniel Kaffee (a role Cox feels is patterned after Marcari), Jack Nicholson as Col. Nathan Jessup (the role of Col. Samuel Adams, according to Cox) and Demi Moore as a Navy lawyer who assists Kaffee.

A spokesman for Castle Rock Entertainment, a Beverly Hills-based film company partly owned by Reiner, said this week the company has no comment on the lawsuit.

A disclaimer at the end of the movie states that the “characters and incidents portrayed and names used herein are fictitious” and that any similarity to real incidents or names “is purely coincidental.”

Another aspect of the story is that Aaron Sorkin, the man who wrote both the play and the movie on which it was based, is, according to Marcari and Cox, the brother of Deborah Sorkin, the lawyer assigned to one of the Marines who opted to take an other-than-honorable discharge rather than go to trial.

They believe Sorkin got the story from his sister and turned it into the script.

Attempts to reach Aaron Sorkin and his agent, Creative Artists Agency, were unsuccessful. Both have unlisted phone numbers in New York City.

Indeed, the similarities between the incident depicted in the movie and the 1986 incident that involved Cox are striking. They include:

* Not only were the Marines in the movie based on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they were based in the same location and in the same division as Cox and his fellow Marines;

* The victim’s name in the movie is William Santiago. In the real-life incident, it was William Alvarado.

* In the movie, one of the Marines says, “We were only going to cut his hair.” Cox said the purpose of disciplining Alvarado was to cut his hair into the shape of a checkerboard to teach him a lesson.

* In the movie, Santiago writes a letter to the Naval Investigative Service to complain of some of the members of his platoon firing illegally into enemy territory. In the real-life incident, Alvarado wrote a letter to his congressman to tell him of illegal activities within his platoon, including illegally firing rifles into enemy territory.

* In the movie, the cloth used to gag Santiago is believed to have been dipped in poison, thus causing him to hemorrhage. In the real-life incident, the possibility that poison was on the rag was introduced in the trial but was dismissed.

But despite the similarities, two major differences between the movie and the real-life incident bother Cox even more. Ironically, it’s those two differences that may hinder the success of his current lawsuit against Castle Rock.

The first difference is that, in the movie, Santiago died, while in the real-life incident, Alvarado lived.

The other major difference is that the two Marines in the movie, while found not guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, were found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and were dishonorably discharged.

In real life, Cox and the other two Marines that went to trial were found guilty only of simple assault and remained in the Marines, even keeping their ranks.

David Cox on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 1986

Cox and Valdez, one of the Marines who took an other-than-honorable discharge instead of going to trial, feel that since the movie is obviously based on the incident that involved them, the movie unfairly portrays them as murderers who were dishonorably discharged.

But Marcari, Cox’s lawyer then but not in the current lawsuit against the film company, feels those differences between the script and what really happened, as well as other fictionalized dramatizations in the movie, may be enough to protect Castle Rock if the case goes to court.

“It’ll be a tough case,” Marcari said. “Any trial is a matter of public record. They changed it sufficiently to protect (themselves). But it’s definitely based on what happened.

“I don’t think (the lawsuit) will be successful, but that’s just my opinion, and I don’t practice in that area of the law,” he added.

Another aspect of the movie that Cox is angry with is the portrayal of the Marines on trial.

“We were typically portrayed as dumb 19-year-old robots in the movie,” he said. “But we knew exactly what we were doing. We knew what we were up against.

“I don’t regret what I did. I regret the fluke results that came about,” he added. “If I had to do it all over again, I would. I’d just use a different gag.”

Valdez, the former Marine who is a co-plaintiff with Cox in the lawsuit against Castle Rock, reached this week at his home in Sarasota, Fla., said he has no doubt the movie’s script was drawn from the real-life incident in which he was involved.

“But the way they portrayed us is disturbing,” he added. “They left out some of the facts. They said we actually killed this guy, when we didn’t. Obviously, the reason I’m disturbed is that they did portray us in a false light. We have enough proof.”

Calls to Cox’s lawyer in Brighton and Valdez’s lawyer in Florida were not returned.

Cox received his honorable discharge from the Marines in August 1989 after serving out his four-year stint.

With a paralegal degree, he may go on to law school in the future. He still keeps in touch with Marcari. In fact, he and Valdez are meeting with Marcari this weekend to start discussing the possibility of writing a book about the incident.

Marcari said he feels bad about what happened to Cox and the other Marines and that the only thing they were guilty of was being good Marines.

“They were all good officers. That’s the sad thing,” he said. “If they said, ‘Take that hill,’ they’d take that hill. They were clearly the 10 best Marines down there.

“The Marine Corps teaches them to take care of their own,” he added. “If there are any problems, handle them within the platoon.”

And he said Cox was a victim just as much as Alvarado, a victim of commanders who gave an order that shouldn’t have been given.

“He’s a great guy,” he said of Cox. “He’s loyal. He’s a good Marine, and he probably would have made a great Marine if he stayed with it. He felt like he was following orders. He loved the Marine Corps, and he wanted to stay in. And I think he would have stayed in if this didn’t happen. I think it kind of soured it for him.”

Cox said he and the other two Marines are pursuing the lawsuit because they feel they’ve been unfairly portrayed.

He said he and Valdez even contacted Sorkin when they heard the movie was in the works and offered to help out, but Sorkin never called them back.

“All they had to do was call us,” Cox said. “I would have been glad to take a leave of absence to go out there and tell the real story.”

But how does he feel about the movie?

“If I hadn’t known the truth, it probably would’ve been the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life.”

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Clayton J. Lonetree (born 1961), son of a Winnebago father and Navajo mother,[1] served nine years in prison for espionage.[2] During the early 1980s, Lonetree was a Marine Corps Security Guard stationed at the Embassy of the United States in Moscow.

Lonetree is the first U.S. Marine to be convicted of spying against the United States.[3] Lonetree, who was stationed in Moscow as a guard at the U.S. Embassy in the early 1980s, confessed in 1987 to selling documents to the Soviet Union. Lonetree was seduced by a 25-year-old female KGB officer named "Violetta Seina"[4][5] in that year. He was then blackmailed into handing over documents when he was assigned to Vienna, Austria. These documents included the blueprints of the U.S. Embassy buildings in Moscow and Vienna and the names and identities of U.S. undercover intelligence agents in the Soviet Union. He was tried in a military court in Quantico, Virginia and convicted of espionage on August 21, 1987.

In May 1991, Lonetree filed an appeal, asking that his conviction be overturned because he had never learned the identity of one accuser, but this was denied. He initially received a 30-year sentence with a reduction in rank from E-5 to E-1, a fine of $5,000, the loss of all military pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Alfred M. Gray, Jr., recommended to the Secretary of the Navy that Lonetree's sentence be reduced from 30 to 15 years in a letter written in 1989 that said that the effect of Private Lonetree's actions "was minimal." In addition, he said, the Marine's motivation "was not treason or greed, but rather the lovesick response of a naive, young, immature and lonely troop in a lonely and hostile environment." His sentence was reduced to 15 years, but he was released in 1996 after serving only nine years at the United States Disciplinary Barracks.

According to Time magazine:[6]

Marine Sergeant Clayton Lonetree, 25, was so highly regarded at his job as security guard at the U.S. embassy in Moscow that in November 1985 he was detached for special duty at the Reagan–Gorbachev summit in Geneva. Last week Lonetree sat in a brig at the Marine base at Quantico, Va., suspected by his superiors of helping the Soviet KGB filch classified U.S. documents from diplomatic offices in Moscow and Vienna. Lonetree, authorities said, had an affair with a female KGB agent who was reportedly working as a translator at the embassy.

He revealed the names of CIA personnel, detailed the work habits of embassy staff, and sketched the layout of the Moscow and Vienna embassy offices. The harsh sentence was given due to serious security breaches at the embassy, some of which later were found to have been the result of the Aldrich Ames case.[7]

In 2001, Lonetree testified as an expert witness at the trial of former United States Army Reserve Colonel George Trofimoff, who was charged with spying for the KGB. After remorsefully describing his own recruitment by the Soviet State, Lonetree publicly sobbed on the witness stand.[8] Colonel Trofimoff was subsequently convicted of espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Marine Security Guard Clayton Lonetree was seduced by a Russian woman, “Violetta Seina,” at the annual Marine Corps Ball in November 1985. She worked as a telephone operator and translator for Embassy Moscow but lived a double life as a KGB agent. Lonetree was so highly regarded that he was chosen to be part of the Marine unit assigned to provide security for the 1985 summit between Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. However, despite the strict non-fraternization (“no frat”) policy imposed on all MSGs in such parts of the world, Lonetree and Seina began a relationship soon after they met. She introduced him to her “Uncle Sasha,” KGB operative Aleksey Yefimov, who asked Lonetree to become a “friend of the Soviet Union.”

Lonetree was soon convinced to turn over confidential information, including embassy floor plans. After he was transferred to Embassy Vienna in 1986, he passed on blueprints of that embassy and burn bags with top secret cables, including on U.S. arms reduction. On December 14, 1986, Lonetree came forward to the CIA station chief in Vienna and confessed. He was immediately turned over to the Navy Intelligence Service (NIS) and placed under arrest, charged with espionage.

Lonetree was convicted on multiple counts of turning over classified information, was court-martialed in 1987 and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He was the first U.S. Marine Corps member ever convicted of espionage. Because of his cooperation with authorities, his sentence was reduced to 25 years of which he served nine before being released in February 1996.

Chaos ensued as this scandal began to unfold. Secretary of State George Shultz phoned Ambassador to Thailand Bill Brown, in the middle of the night. Brown was a former Marine who had served in Moscow and was considered a useful resource. As Brown notes in his oral history, when the Secretary of State “asks you to do something, you do it.” Brown went straight to Washington to help remedy the problem. What was initially supposed to be a quick fix turned into an ordeal that took a decade for everyone involved to get over. Embassy Moscow was assumed to have been so infiltrated that staff took to using children’s “magic slate” writing pads to pass messages back and forth, while the new embassy building was discovered to be “one huge, KGB radio station.” Brown was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy beginning in November 1998.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Considering the evil results that patriotism is fraught with for the average man, it is as nothing compared with the insult and injury that patriotism heaps upon the soldier himself,-- that poor, deluded victim of superstition and ignorance. He, the savior of his country, the protector of his nation, -- what has patriotism in store for him? A life of slavish submission, vice, and perversion, during peace; a life of danger, exposure, and death, during war.

While on a recent lecture tour in San Francisco, I visited the Presidio, the most beautiful spot overlooking the Bay and Golden Gate Park. Its purpose should have been playgrounds for children, gardens and music for the recreation of the weary. Instead it is made ugly, dull, and gray by barracks, -- barracks wherein the rich would not allow their dogs to dwell. In these miserable shanties soldiers are herded like cattle; here they waste their young days, polishing the boots and brass buttons of their superior officers. Here, too, I saw the distinction of classes: sturdy sons of a free Republic, drawn up in line like convicts, saluting every passing shrimp of a lieutenant. American equality, degrading manhood and elevating the uniform!

Barrack life further tends to develop tendencies of sexual perversion. It is gradually producing along this line results similar to European military conditions. Havelock Ellis, the noted writer on sex psychology, has made a thorough study of the subject. I quote: "Some of the barracks are great centers of male prostitution.... The number of soldiers who prostitute themselves is greater than we are willing to believe. It is no exaggeration to say that in certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the venality of the majority of the men.... On summer evenings Hyde Park and the neighborhood of Albert Gate are full of guardsmen and others plying a lively trade, and with little disguise, in uniform or out.... In most cases the proceeds form a comfortable addition to Tommy Atkins' pocket money."

To what extent this perversion has eaten its way into the army and navy can best be judged from the fact that special houses exist for this form of prostitution. The practice is not limited to England; it is universal. "Soldiers are no less sought after in France than in England or in Germany, and special houses for military prostitution exist both in Paris and the garrison towns."

Had Mr. Havelock Ellis included America in his investigation of sex perversion, he would have found that the same conditions prevail in our army and navy as in those of other countries. The growth of the standing army inevitably adds to the spread of sex perversion; the barracks are the incubators.

Aside from the sexual effects of barrack life, it also tends to unfit the soldier for useful labor after leaving the army. Men, skilled in a trade, seldom enter the army or navy, but even they, after a military experience, find themselves totally unfitted for their former occupations. Having acquired habits of idleness and a taste for excitement and adventure, no peaceful pursuit can content them. Released from the army, they can turn to no useful work. But it is usually the social riff-raff, discharged prisoners and the like, whom either the struggle for life or their own inclination drives into the ranks. These, their military term over, again turn to their former life of crime, more brutalized and degraded than before. It is a well-known fact that in our prisons there is a goodly number of ex-soldiers; while, on the other hand, the army and navy are to a great extent plied with ex-convicts.

Of all the evil results I have just described none seems to me so detrimental to human integrity as the spirit patriotism has produced in the case of Private William Buwalda. Because he foolishly believed that one can be a soldier and exercise his rights as a man at the same time, the military authorities punished him severely. True, he had served his country fifteen years, during which time his record was unimpeachable. According to Gen. Funston, who reduced Buwalda's sentence to three years, "the first duty of an officer or an enlisted man is unquestioned obedience and loyalty to the government, and it makes no difference whether he approves of that government or not." Thus Funston stamps the true character of allegiance. According to him, entrance into the army abrogates the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!

In justification of this most outrageous sentence of Buwalda, Gen. Funston tells the American people that the soldier's action was "a serious crime equal to treason." Now, what did this "terrible crime" really consist of? Simply in this: William Buwalda was one of fifteen hundred people who attended a public meeting in San Francisco; and, oh, horrors, he shook hands with the speaker, Emma Goldman. A terrible crime, indeed, which the General calls "a great military offense, infinitely worse than desertion."

Can there be a greater indictment against patriotism than that it will thus brand a man a criminal, throw him into prison, and rob him of the results of fifteen years of faithful service?

Buwalda gave to his country the best years of his life and his very manhood. But all that was as nothing. Patriotism is inexorable and, like all insatiable monsters, demands all or nothing. It does not admit that a soldier is also a human being, who has a right to his own feelings and opinions, his own inclinations and ideas. No, patriotism can not admit of that. That is the lesson which Buwalda was made to learn; made to learn at a rather costly, though not at a useless price. When he returned to freedom, he had lost his position in the army, but he regained his self-respect. After all, that is worth three years of imprisonment.